Yesterday, I wondered aloud how the railroad companies keep snow off the tracks. It turns out that they use plows attached to train engines to clear the tracks.

Before I was able to check Google for the answer, Elysha suggested that the tracks might be heated.

“No,” I said. “Can you imagine the amount of energy that would be required to heat all that track? Besides, haven’t you walked the train tracks before? They’re not even warm.”

“No,” she said, looking at me like I was insane. “I’ve never walked the train tracks before.”

I feel like I spent half my childhood walking along railroad tracks. Balancing on the rails. Placing pennies on the tracks to see what would happen when the train passed over them. Racing across train trestles.

It was just something that kids did.

Something that most kids did, I argued. Perhaps not today with increased parental vigilance and the tragic restrictions on childhood freedom, but twenty years ago or more, when children were still allowed to roam free, didn’t most of you walk along the train tracks at least once?

I say yes. I say that Elysha is in an extreme minority of people who have never even stood on the railroad tracks.